Weather, queueing and people watching.

Things are looking up. The weather app on my phone says there is only a 10% chance of rain today, which is a big improvement on 50% and even 80% that we have had over the last few days. We didn’t get rained on at all yesterday but this morning I went out running first thing under an almost completely clear sky only to have it start to rain on me half way round my normal route. It seemed like just a few spots so I was not especially bothered. By the time I approached the breadshop, however, it was really coming down and I was soaked through. By lunchtime it had cleared and the sun was shining, but those banks of cloud were still there - ominously waiting for their chance to move in.

My friend Colin has written about his frustration at the queues for buying tickets at the railway station. We had the same experience yesterday, not for the first time. There are ticket machines but they are not very user-friendly (even Spanish friends agree with us in that), especially if you want to get your old-dear discount on the “tarjeta dorada”. Besides, there was only person ahead of us in the queue so it hardly seemed worth going through the vexation of making the machine understand what we wanted. That one person moved up and the ticket clerk proceeded to take almost ten minutes dealing with her request to change a ticket. There was some problem with the card she had used to pay for the original ticket. By this time the queue had built up behind us. The two ladies behind us had hedged their bets, one of them standing in the queue and the other doing battle with the ticket vending machine. Eventually, but only just in time to get our tickets within the required five minutes before the train was due to leave, we moved up to the “taquilla”. The lady battling with the ticket machine surrendered and came back into the queue! Today we shall probably go by bus!

At the chess tournament yesterday an appeal went out for people, please, please, please, to fill in their score sheets properly. For those who are unfamiliar with such events, in a serious competition game of chess the two players record their moves on a score sheet, which has a carbon copy underneath. The names of both opponents go on the score sheets, as does the number of the table at which they are playing and a range of other details. In this particular tournament in Pontevedra they must add another important detail: which section of the tournament they are playing in. For there are really two events going on, an amateur event for weaker players and a more difficult section, where the Chess Masters and International Masters and Grand Masters take part and take apart the otherwise generally strong players in the event. It seems that some people have not been putting names on their score sheets but have simply written “Him” and “Me” or “Me” and “My opponent”. I presume that those guilty of such practices are children, or maybe just jokers, but it must make for quite a nightmare for the organisers when they try to organise who is playing whom in the next round!

I have been doing a spot of people-watching. Some people, like me, walk around pretending to understand what is going on across the various boards. Others really do understand what is going on and stop and observe the progress of complex games. Some of the accompanying adults simply sit and read, potter on their mobile phones, or, like me, read and complete sudoku or crossword puzzles. Yesterday another spectator tried to convince me that I should progress from sudoku to kenken, a much more mathematical kind of puzzle. Life may be just too short for such things.

Then there is the dress code, if such a thing can be said to exist. Many of the youngsters playing sport t-shirts from various chess clubs, from here in Galicia, from Catalonia, from Portugal and from France. The older gentlemen vary from very dapper to smart casual to just plain scruffy. The young men fall mostly somewhere in the smart casual to just plain scruffy range. Some of the young girls playing wears very short shorts. I don’t suppose her opponent notices them from where he is sitting. Others might though. Another young girl wears her summer best, including glittery gold sandals. Most just wear jeans and t-shirts.

The prize, though, goes to a mum. She has two daughters playing in the amateur section. One of them seems very small, but I have been told that she is nine. The other is a bit older, maybe 12. So unless she had her first child when she was barely in her teens herself, she must be pushing thirty. Like many a trendy thirty-something she wears ripped jeans, a fashion I fail to understand, but that’s how it goes. On Thursday she wore a sort of off-the-shoulder cropped top, unbuttoned to reveal quite a lot of cleavage. Yesterday she wore an even shorter top, showing less cleavage but very figure-hugging and revealing a belly-button piercing. She wears her blonde hair in high bunches with a thick fringe falling over her forehead. I have seen her at other similar events, dressed in a similar fashion. Sometimes she and her daughters all have the same hairstyle.

It’s a free country. She can dress as she chooses but I do think she might have mistaken the chess tournament circuit for the music concert circuit. And a friend of mine expressed some concern that one day soon her older daughter might turn round and say that her down-with-the-kids style is just a tad embarrassing. I am not suggesting that she should dress like an old fuddy duddy but maybe a little restraint is called for.

 Of course, my friend and I may be mistaken she could be the older sister of the young chess players but I doubt it.

And again, maybe it’s the case that I am turning into an old fuddy-duddy who fails to understand the younger generation.